RUE d'ASTORG 1, PARIS (updated)

... one afternoon in Paris, some time between 1981 and 1982, after returning from London where I had been looking for funding and “casting” for a new film project, I was taken by the hand, almost literally, by a well-experienced agent lady to the apartment of the Icon herself. I had met the agent at a dinner at John Kobal’s* house in London a few weeks earlier where he was whipping up some spaghetti for a few good friends. We talked about my “casting” woes, me with all of 25ish years of naïveté and dreams, at the very cosy and relaxed table with well-seasoned pros and legends (Paul Morrissey was as happy with John’s pasta as I was).  Between the salade and the parmesan, not only did John come up with the incredible coincidence of having just returned from the home of the German actor top on my wishlist (some weeks later I had the surreal feeling of this person coming down from the screen and walking through my front door, just as the scene in a PopEye cartoon that most impressed me as a kid: PopEye came out of his frame and took a can of spinach from the hands of a kid in the cinema), but the famous agent also joined in the enthusiastic chorus to suggest asking the Icon, the “Catherine” of my childhood, for the role of the mother in the story of a complicated father-mother-daughter relationship in an English family in Paris in the 1900’s.  “It’d be perfect, her mother was English, you know that,” says she. 

That’s how, one afternoon in Paris, this 20-something Hong-Kong-born Canada-schooled ex-student and new-filmmaker, was face to face with the Icon who also seemed to have, surrealistically, walked down from the screen.  She came out of a frame of the Jules and Jim that so impressed me while I was of an age to get to every single European film offered by the ciné-club at the HK City Hall. The agent lady had brought me there, having called me earlier in the day, very excited, saying that my idol, indeed "Catherine" herself, had read the script, agreed to do it and wanted to meet me.  

If Jeanne was shocked to find herself with a potential “director” all of 25 years of age, a shy awkward Asian girl, too pretty to be taken seriously (I distinctly remember having worn a violet gypsy skirt which had a great swinging movement, with a sheer pastel purple tunic top over a body stocking very popular that year, a look that was decidedly “young film student trying to look chic”), she had the grace and elegance not to show it at all.  Instead she spoke in a warm sisterly feminist manner, talking about the films she had directed: Lumière and l’Adolescente, saying frankly, “I was a success because as a woman, I managed to find the financial support to direct these films, but I am also a failure because these films didn’t find their audience and didn’t succeed at the box office.”  

Then, I talked about Marguerite Duras and India Song. She sprang to her feet, half-whispering half-gasping dramatically “wait!", ran to the next room and came back with a 45’ record...

“Chanson

Toi qui ne veux rien dire

Toi qui me parles d'elle
Et toi qui me dis tout
Ô toi
Que nous dansions ensemble
Toi qui me parlais d'elle
D'elle qui te chantait
Toi qui me parle d'elle
De son nom oublié
De son corps de mon corps
De cet amour là
De cet amour mort..."

It was a record of Carlos d’Alessio’s music which also contains her rendition of the song not in the film itself.  “It’s for you”, she says, thrusting it into my hands. 

A full circle was closed from the Jules and Jim of the City Hall screenings where “Catherine” haunted my nights through the months before the heartbreak of uprooting from my birthplace, to this instant standing on the impeccably-polished wooden floor of an apartment off the Champs-Elysées, with the mythical lady in flesh and blood calling herself my “sister-in-arms”, insisting on a solidarity between women who were "mad and brave enough" to enter this male bastion of film-directing and producing.

(*) John Kobal : The last year of University in Montreal before I left, in the Communication Arts program in which I chose a focus on Film, John was a special guest lecturer one semester for “Hollywood musicals” which I had always loved.  A renowned specialist in the genre, John Kobal was a native Canadian who had settled in London for many decades, famous for books and his incredible collection of photographs of Hollywood icons.  For his last evening class, my classmates and I organised a small party in the basement of my parents’ home, where John was invited for drinks. My friends and I arranged to put on a record of a well-known Fred Astaire song as soon as John arrived at the house.  I was waiting at the foot of the stairs in a ballgown to sweep John into a Fred and Ginger dance number.  Delighted, John signed his book “Gotta Sing Gotta Dance” for me and wrote on the first page, “thanks for making my last night so joyful” which was a typical naughty John wink adding a little spice and intrigue for anyone opening the book afterwards.

(first published in https://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2017/08/vale-jeanne-moreau-cinephiles-around.html)